Dallas Design News to Know — Blue Print, JD Staron, and More

Baradaran at the ranch where organic cacti are cultivated for her vegan leathers.

Dig into all the latest Dallas-centric design news to know this February 2023.

Designer and maker of bespoke carpets JD Staron has opened its first Texas showroom in Dallas Design Center. Originally a painter, master weaver Jakub Staron studied weaving at boarding school in his native Poland. He later founded the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and, after a year, moved to the U.S. and obtained a BFA in painting from Parsons and an MFA from Hunter College, and he was accepted into boarding art school for weaving.

Staron now owns a premier resource for custom carpets catering to designers and architects. It's his eye as an artist combined with the technique of a craftsman that makes his work so compelling.

"I realized that I’m just using yarns instead of paints," Staron says. "I’m discovering new things every day."

The designer travels to remote areas of India and Nepal to work with weavers and craftspeople to create each rug, often a months-long process. When the designer visited Dallas for a recent event, he fell in love with Texas.

"I saw the whole glamour of it. It's just this incredible energy. People wearing evening gowns to a noon cocktail party was just: ‘Wow, this is my place!’"

After participating in the Kips Bay Showhouse, the JD Staron team knew it was the right decision to open a showroom in Texas. A partnership in the showroom space with Studio Van Den Akker — makers of exquisite made-to-order furniture, lighting, and architectural products — made for a perfect match. — Anne Lee Phillips

In 2008, brothers Richard and Bryce Capp devised a way to make extra money by creating reproduction art prints for the interior design market out of their parents’ shed in Queensland, Australia. Bryce, who designed the brochure, tossed in a photo of a wall mural he liked, even though they’d never done one before. "We had more interest from people in the murals than our prints, so it derailed our whole business plan," says Richard, whose accent lies somewhere between a rough-and-tumble Steve Irwin and a suave Hugh Jackman. "We were young and naive, so we went down that path." Requests for wallpaper soon followed. A quest for a vibrant design market took the brothers to Austin in 2016 and, five years later, Dallas.

Last month, the Capps opened their first retail showroom, Milton & King (named after their parents’ middle names), in the Dallas Design District. Digitally printed on woven cotton, the wallcoverings feature hundreds of designs created by 60 artists from around the globe and include scenic murals such as tropical landscapes inspired by 18th-century etchings, botanicals including their best-selling Herbarium Antique wallpaper, and floral patterns like Huia & Chrysanthemum, which is based on the Huia, one of New Zealand's most iconic

extinct birds. Everything is made to order at the showroom's 3,500-square-foot print room, which will double in size in January. The Capps are also introducing customizable vinyl and non-woven wallpapers suitable for hospitality use. Business is booming, but the brothers are still hands-on. "The advantage to printing on-site is that we can control the quality — Bryce is in the print room every day," Richard says. "And if you come into the showroom, you’ll probably be greeted by me." — Rebecca Sherman

Blue Print has moved its to-the-trade showroom in the Dallas Design District to a larger space in a more prominent building on Oak Lawn Avenue where designers can shop Blue Print's substantial inventory of upholstery, case goods, antiques, lighting, and accessories in the new 20,000-square-foot warehouse. The showroom, an extension of Blue Print's charming retail bungalow in Uptown, offers a slew of readily available furnishings, such as a King George mahogany sideboard and Scandinavian rosewood table, along with the store's own furniture line and custom furnishings.

It's all geared toward what designers are saying they need right now: beautiful furniture with no long lead times and no big shipping costs. It's no wonder Blue Print knows how to accommodate this demanding customer base — Blue Print was founded by designers Cynthia Collins, Caroline Eastman, Leslie Jenkins, Carrie Jane Pogoloff, and Lucy Ward. — RS

Los Angeles interior designer Natasha Baradaran's new upholstery leather made from cactus is an industry-first alternative to conventional animal leather — and there are a lot of reasons to love it.

Soft and sturdy, Baradaran's trademarked Livwell Cactus Leather is cultivated from native cactus species on a USDA Organic-certified ranch in Central Mexico, grown without herbicides or pesticides and sustainably nurtured by natural rainfall, earth minerals, and natural techniques to stimulate the micro-flora in the ground. Unlike many animal hides that are tanned with harsh chemicals, Baradaran's cactus leather is produced with nontoxic methods and is biodegradable. The vegan leathers come in 17 subtle, earth-inspired colors and textures, and are available in Dallas at Allan Knight & Associates. — RS